Fine skiing for November today on the main Black Prince slopes. The November crust is still saving the day. A fairly good workout breaking trail in 20cms new snow and 30cms unconsolidated snow below that. No recent wind effect to the top of the trees. The crust still carries almost everywhere we skied up and down. With a light touch and an eye for the willows we had good turns from the top to the trail.
No signifigant weak layers found in several rough compression and burp tests. Several healthy sounding avalanches ran from the big slabs in the alpine somewhere on the Warspite/Black Prince ridge.
The weather forecast for Banff, Yoho and Kananaskis seems to point to a calm, showery weekend and the avalanche danger is forecast to decrease over the next two days in Banff, Kootenay and Yoho. However, if the weather forecast is wrong and the wind does blow up high, there just may be avalanches running fairly far and fast out of the steep alpine along the divide. I would not recommend wandering around under any big, steep, alpine terrain on skiis or crampons just yet. If you do, just remember what the Friendly Giant used to say to Rusty, "Look up. Look way up!"
Larry Stanier
Mountain Guide